Back from "vacation", what's missing after all E3-talk?

[Guden Oden]

Yes, I got tempbanned, you can all stop laughing now... (I don't regret saying whatever it was I said that caused it though, so there. Gave me more spare time to enjoy WoW anyway by being away from this place for a bit! )

What I've been thinking of after all's been said and done:

* Microphone in Wii controller - fact or fiction? It was rumored, but never confirmed in any way to my knowledge. Seems weird to me they'd put in a speaker, and would have a speaker used to very good effect in the DS, but not put one in the wiimote.

* 360 camera - very little hullabaloo over this one IMO! Is MS even serious about launching it, or is it just that it was overshadowed by even greater things?

* 360 HDDVD drive - price? And why does it look like a 360 that's fallen flat on its face? The design frankly sucks. And will it require an external wall-wart transformer of some sort (suckier still), or will there be a passthrough from the 360's own giant power brick? Questions, questions...

* PS3 GPU specs. Still nothing new here... I was hoping to be able to change my sig after this E3 just to shut Nano^h^h^h^hPC-Engine up about it being 'nothing great', but it seems I'll have to wait a little longer!

* Anything else I missed, what did you expect to hear about only to be met by silence?

 

[NavNucST3]

Yes, I got tempbanned, you can all stop laughing now... (I don't regret saying whatever it was I said that caused it though, so there. Gave me more spare time to enjoy WoW anyway by being away from this place for a bit! )

What I've been thinking of after all's been said and done:

* Microphone in Wii controller - fact or fiction? It was rumored, but never confirmed in any way to my knowledge. Seems weird to me they'd put in a speaker, and would have a speaker used to very good effect in the DS, but not put one in the wiimote.

* 360 camera - very little hullabaloo over this one IMO! Is MS even serious about launching it, or is it just that it was overshadowed by even greater things?

* 360 HDDVD drive - price? And why does it look like a 360 that's fallen flat on its face? The design frankly sucks. And will it require an external wall-wart transformer of some sort (suckier still), or will there be a passthrough from the 360's own giant power brick? Questions, questions...

* PS3 GPU specs. Still nothing new here... I was hoping to be able to change my sig after this E3 just to shut Nano^h^h^h^hPC-Engine up about it being 'nothing great', but it seems I'll have to wait a little longer!

* Anything else I missed, what did you expect to hear about only to be met by silence?

I expected to hear that SFII was "online right now!"

I agree about the hd-dvd design, I was thinking slimmer. (the toshiba laptop drive in the Qosmio G30?, is what I thought they were going to use)

I don't think the microphone is very good in the DS, but thats my anger with trying to say BLUE! over and over and over again in Brain Age, and it NEVER registering. It does this on both of my DSes. So the speaker thing works for me...I guess, its not like I dont already have surround sound...hearing about the speaker I was more like...whatever.

As far as the camera goes, i'm not really sure where they want to take that, I do love uno, but I'm not sure I really want to SEE any of you :smile:

The PS3 specs, well, I think they wanted us to deal with the price first, although that is the other "silence" that I was wondering about, every time before we saw cell/rsx specs mentioned. Then again, maybe thats one of the things that DIDN'T change.

 

[expletive]

Well here's some info on the camera gesture recognition technology:

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/10965/Xbox-Live-Vision-Camera-to-Use-GestureTek-APIs/

The camera was annoucned with a few pretty nice accessories (wireless steering wheel, wireless 360 controller adapter for PC, wireless headsets) but there was just so much for them to talk about, and with nothing killer to show off the camera with, it probably got the appropriate amount of attention. I think they did have the activision poker game using it somewhere at the show but with everything else they had at their PC its forgivable.

Apparently mums the word on the HD-DVD price and i dont see reason for them to annoucne it any sooner than they have to. Seems it will come with the 'nice' MS remote too so all those dreaming of $99 can forget it.

The microphone on the wii controller was a speaker.

I was expecting a new Rare game to be announced but i suppose MS needs to save somethign for X05 or TGS...

 

[NANOTEC]

Well Grall paid a visit during your absence so you didn't miss much. As for RSX, so far it seems to be nothing more than an evolutionary step to PC GPUs.

 

[Nesh]

* PS3 GPU specs. Still nothing new here... I was hoping to be able to change my sig after this E3 just to shut Nano^h^h^h^hPC-Engine up about it being 'nothing great', but it seems I'll have to wait a little longer!

Just watch the games and decide if its nothing special

 

[Shifty Geezer]

* Motion controls in PS3 controller (now dubbed DM by me!) are confirmed rotational and linear motion capable

* People hiss and curse at Sony for adding motion control in a brain-dead copy of Nintendo's strategy

* No-one utters even a single syllable against MS for producing their camera...

* XB camera hasn't yet had any games announced that I know of. MS are using a third-part guesture recognition solution that's been in place in shows and stuff I think. The example had a sword following a player's finger.

Has this camera been priced?

* Heavenly Sword has stolen the show for many

Mostly it was about the games, real time PS3 and Wii showings so people could get to see these products actually exist. And choking the public on PS3's price. No fancy hardware announcements other than those covered already. Nintendo are once again saying their Wii has secrets yet to be unveiled!

 

[Guden Oden]

and with nothing killer to show off the camera with

You know, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

If they want the thing to be successful, they need something 'killer'. They need their own zelda-class game with an in-game fishing mode where you swing with your finger or somesuch. (Though far-fetched as it may be of thinking that MS of all companies would ever rip off ideas of a competitor... )

Apparently mums the word on the HD-DVD price and i dont see reason for them to annoucne it any sooner than they have to.

Well, if they announce it too soon, there won't be time for people to prepare. It will receive less mind-share in both media and buyers I think simply because if there's no price then it must be far off into the future. Sales might suffer.

Seems it will come with the 'nice' MS remote too so all those dreaming of $99 can forget it.

I think it should come with that nice logitech one instead, heh.

The microphone on the wii controller was a speaker.

Yeah, meh. And I had hoped for both. Hey, if it had, then Wii could be used as a VoIP telephone! Just hold the wiimote up to your ear hehehe...

Speaking of Rare, seems their pinata game is scheduled for christmas. I fully expect that to turn into christmas 2007, or maybe '08.

 

[onanie]

Well Grall paid a visit during your absence so you didn't miss much. As for RSX, so far it seems to be nothing more than an evolutionary step to PC GPUs.

The RSX seems much more than that

 

[Dave Baumann]

* No-one utters even a single syllable against MS for producing their camera...

Eh? Thought the camera was on the cards since day 1.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Speaking of Rare, seems their pinata game is scheduled for christmas. I fully expect that to turn into christmas 2007, or maybe '08.

How good the Pinata game will be with the "wiimote", it's like the controller was made for bashing pinãtas.... wait something does not compute now........

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Eh? Thought the camera was on the cards since day 1.

Yeah it was, early on. Originally IIRC it was only with talk of video phone webcam'ing and not really motion control. Of course motion control makes sense once you've got it attached. I was just poking fun at the certain hypocracy of some board members who slag off Sony for copying ideas (did it with Live! like online too) but quite happily accomodate the others copying ideas. Ideally no-one should gripe about shared concepts, except stock holders in certain companies

Interestingly I checked the Guesture company MS are licensing and they claim a patent from 1996 that grants them absolute rights to any interactivity where the user is shown on screen. Expect Sony to get slapped with another lawsuit!

 

[Powderkeg]

Yeah it was, early on. Originally IIRC it was only with talk of video phone webcam'ing and not really motion control. Of course motion control makes sense once you've got it attached. I was just poking fun at the certain hypocracy of some board members who slag off Sony for copying ideas (did it with Live! like online too) but quite happily accomodate the others copying ideas. Ideally no-one should gripe about shared concepts, except stock holders in certain companies

It's kind of hard to point the finger at MS and claim they stole the idea of a camera when the vast majority of webcams on the net are running on a Microsoft OS, and were long before Sony had one.

 

[Qroach]

He's got a point there Shifty. Still this copying nonesnse started a long time ago.

 

[Deepak]

It's kind of hard to point the finger at MS and claim they stole the idea of a camera when the vast majority of webcams on the net are running on a Microsoft OS, and were long before Sony had one.

But Eyetoy != Webcam

And what has MS OS has anything to do with Eyetoy/360cam?

 

[Guden Oden]

It's kind of hard to point the finger at MS and claim they stole the idea of a camera when the vast majority of webcams on the net are running on a Microsoft OS, and were long before Sony had one.

Now be fair here, do you know of a great many (popular) apps on the PC that uses a camera like the eyetoy does? Webcams may be common as air, but that's actually all they are in most cases.

It's not really interesting tho arguing over who ripped off whom regarding what feature, but rather what each player actually DOES with the features they have, regardless of if they came up with them themselves or ripped them off of somebody else. Nintendo pretty much pioneered the joypad and the D-cross by themselves, I'm not going to slag every other player in the industry for using the same feature. Other pads have been very successful using variations of Nintendo's original concept, and I assume the same will be true with various modes of online access, USB cameras and whatnot.

I'd like to see MS implement something killer with their cam, because unlike PS2, the 360 actually has enough processor oomph to do some pretty radical stuff with the video input. I didn't really see that happen this E3 though, which kind of tells me MS doesn't really know what to do with the camera and is sort of hoping something cool will come up all by itself along the way. Afaik, they haven't even set a firm release date for the thing yet.

This, of course, is not a winning strategy.

 

[aldo]

BTW, did anyone hear any news regarding headsets for the PS3? Is there a jack on the controller to accommodate a wired headset? Did Sony feature a wired or wireless headset at E3? If Sony is touting the chat feature, shouldn't a headset be included with the the PS3? Is it possible that I'm obsessing about the headset? :smile:

-aldo

 

[Guden Oden]

The console has bluetooth built-in. With that in mind, why would you need (or even want) a jack on the pad and a cord up to your mouth/ear?

 

[scooby_dooby]

You know, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

If they want the thing to be successful, they need something 'killer'.

Poker

 

[aldo]

The console has bluetooth built-in. With that in mind, why would you need (or even want) a jack on the pad and a cord up to your mouth/ear?

I fully agree wireless is the way to go, but I thought the X360 had a jack in it for a wired headset and I would imagine a wired headset is cheaper to manufacture. Mostly, I was just trying to find out if there were any signs of a PS3 headset and an extra jack on the controller would be very telling.

-aldo

 

[scooby_dooby]

The console has bluetooth built-in. With that in mind, why would you need (or even want) a jack on the pad and a cord up to your mouth/ear?

Save money on batteries? Save money on the headset itself?